I wouldn't call it a joke, I would call it ill advised and impractical and significantly less robust than the current timetable. It achieves very little other than unneeded additional off peak DART frequency. The following are the issues I see

1) Reduced turnaround at Greystones, hence less reliability at that end.

2) More DART sets required, hence some trains will be shorter during the peak period.

3) Little increase in peak DART capacity due to reduced train sizes.

4) Even further increases in journey time for all, but particularly longer distance commuters and Intercity travellers.

5) Major deterioration in weekend commuter services for passengers traveling to Tara Street and Pearse form northern & western lines.

The whole timetable is predicated on delivering an unnecessary and highly disruptive fixed interval 10 minute off-peak DART service without providing the infrastructure necessary to deliver it in a reliable and robust fashion.

While people on forums like this may be aware that there is a new timetable, I strongly suspect the majority of regular passengers are not. Given the extraordinarily short-notice and minimal publicity, some people are going to get a seriously unpleasant surprise next Monday. Barry Kenny is going to have a very busy week !

Well perhaps you should be taking this up with the NTA as theyíre the ones driving the 10 minute DART - not Irish Rail.

As I understand it all of the PIS signs in stations are flagging it at this stage?

The funny thing is that its for a more frequent dart service but the thing is that the extra journsy time means that even with an extra five minute wait today it will acually take longer from next week

It's worse than that - if you just turn up for a DART at random your expected wait time will drop from 7.5 minutes to 5 minutes. So, statistically you'll only gain 2.5 minutes from reduced waiting time which will be offset by increased journey time after about 3 stops. When you factor in the decreased reliability the result is going going to mean massively increased journey times for everyone.

I did take this up with the NTA the last time they tried this as it also adds about 15 minutes to a day in Dublin for long-distance commuters on Sligo due to the earlier departure of the 0545 from Sligo and the later departure of the 1705 from Sligo.

They seem to have made a slightly better job of Sligo this time round as the later departures of the 1705 and 1905 seem to better reflect the reality of the journey - in particular removing a long wait at Killucan for the 1905 to cross with the 1800 from Sligo. They now have the 1915 down leaving Enfield at the same time as the 1800 up leaves Mullingar so sensibly the much less heavily loaded up train is scheduled for the long wait.

The 10 minute DART on present infrastructure is a silly stunt so that the NTA can be seen to be Doing Something. It is probably going to spectacularly blow up in everyone's faces especially once the first big storm of the autumn takes down a heap of leaves.

It's worse than that - if you just turn up for a DART at random your expected wait time will drop from 7.5 minutes to 5 minutes. So, statistically you'll only gain 2.5 minutes from reduced waiting time which will be offset by increased journey time after about 3 stops. When you factor in the decreased reliability the result is going going to mean massively increased journey times for everyone.

I did take this up with the NTA the last time they tried this as it also adds about 15 minutes to a day in Dublin for long-distance commuters on Sligo due to the earlier departure of the 0545 from Sligo and the later departure of the 1705 from Sligo.

They seem to have made a slightly better job of Sligo this time round as the later departures of the 1705 and 1905 seem to better reflect the reality of the journey - in particular removing a long wait at Killucan for the 1905 to cross with the 1800 from Sligo. They now have the 1915 down leaving Enfield at the same time as the 1800 up leaves Mullingar so sensibly the much less heavily loaded up train is scheduled for the long wait.

The 10 minute DART on present infrastructure is a silly stunt so that the NTA can be seen to be Doing Something. It is probably going to spectacularly blow up in everyone's faces especially once the first big storm of the autumn takes down a heap of leaves.

That all assumes that the current DART timetable and more specifically the running times reflect reality - I would argue that they donít and DART punctuality statistics would tend to bear that out.

Hence Iíd the extended running times in the new timetable as being more realistic and that it should be more robust as a result.

That all assumes that the current DART timetable and more specifically the running times reflect reality - I would argue that they donít and DART punctuality statistics would tend to bear that out.

Hence Iíd the extended running times in the new timetable as being more realistic and that it should be more robust as a result.

Unfortunately the approach of simply throwing more time into the schedules rather than addressing the underlying issues does not have a great track record (pun intended !).

DART running is currently erratic with trains frequently drifting along way below the line speed sometimes for no reason and other times to avoid running early. Excessive station time is another variable and is frequently evident even when the train is late and all passenger activity has ceased.

Given the disruptive effect of a 50% increase in DART frequency some attempt should be made to improve performance rather than generate additional congestion through slower running.

I suspect also that there will be an increase in the number of complaints relating to early departures, already a characteristic of services such as the 1552 from Bray. This will be even more important with the truncation of northern and western commuter services at Connolly and the increased dependency on DART for connections at stations between Howth Junction and Portmarnock.

The reason the NTA is driving this is that the "Bus Connects" scheme which is due to go live in a year's time and is predicated on there being a higher frequency Dart service so that it can deliver people to stations to continue their journey by train.

Bus Connects will either work well or be a spectacular disaster.

Another impact of the 10 minute Dart is the extra time that Level Crossing Gates will be down, which is only going to increase the number of Gate dodgers trying to go through in the short time they have. This will lead inevitably to Dart delays as the number of collisions with gates increases.

There is no actual increase in the number of DART services at peak hours.

The existing timetable always had a few extra trains thrown in at peak, so the 0747 Bray Connolly and trains to/from Dun Laoghaire. The move to the 10 minute interval just moves these around and extends them to balance capacity out.

There is no change to level crossing downtime as the number of trains is the same between Lansdowne and Dun Laoghaire, Bray could be a bit of problem. To be fair Merrion Gates is NOT the constriction in the evening the traffic queue is mainly as a result of trying to filter onto a clogged Rock Road

Off peak is the big shift but should not be a problem, there are no public or private scheduled buses through Merrion Gates daytime (prize if you can name the only one)

"Due to operational issues the following services will not operate this evening: 16.20 Howth to Bray service 18.25 Bray to Malahide service 20.04 Greystones to Malahide service 21.45 Malahide to Bray service"

Couple of people at Connolly gossiping tonight saying a few lads decided they were not going to work the new timetable today and that's why the services are cancelled and that there was a higher level of unserviceable rolling stock than expected - anything in this, or just rumour?

Commuters are well known not to able to count (my DART was a coach short etc) so unless someone has a photo of a 2 coach train we cannot comment.

There are certainly 4 coach trains out there, in the original draft timetable there was 7 trains per hour peak and the extra train was to be a 4 coach, that was fine but what has come to pass is a mess

There should be
8 * 8 coach sets (7 Tokyu Car + 1 LHB)
10 * 6 coach sets (LHB)
1 * 4 coach
Total 128 which is the agreed availability from 144, thats up from 122 previously so there are more seats per hour than last week.

The availability target is fairly soft it assumes 2 Tokyu sets our of service (8) and 4 LHB (8),

You need 19 sets in motion to make the timetable work,

If you reverted to the 70 minute running time gets rid of the 4 coach set for no loss but due to compatibility issues you can't run an LHB with a Tokyu car so you can't lengthen anything

Commuters are well known not to able to count (my DART was a coach short etc) so unless someone has a photo of a 2 coach train we cannot comment.

There are certainly 4 coach trains out there, in the original draft timetable there was 7 trains per hour peak and the extra train was to be a 4 coach, that was fine but what has come to pass is a mess

There should be
8 * 8 coach sets (7 Tokyu Car + 1 LHB)
10 * 6 coach sets (LHB)
1 * 4 coach
Total 128 which is the agreed availability from 144, thats up from 122 previously so there are more seats per hour than last week.

The availability target is fairly soft it assumes 2 Tokyu sets our of service (8) and 4 LHB (8),

You need 19 sets in motion to make the timetable work,

If you reverted to the 70 minute running time gets rid of the 4 coach set for no loss but due to compatibility issues you can't run an LHB with a Tokyu car so you can't lengthen anything

Only short term option is to get 2-3 of the unloved Alstom units back

Unless I have missed something, the new timetable requires 18 sets to cover advertised services - not all in motion given that turnaround in some instances is up to 20 minutes (at Bray). There may be a further spare set to cover failures & disruptions. The 0800 from Howth failed (at Howth) today but was replaced (from Connolly) by an empty 8 car set from Connolly southwards. Is this the 19th set ?

There is more than one 4 car set in service - I saw two one after the other at Pearse yesterday around 1700. Likewise today, around the same time, there were two four car sets working through Pearse.

Yes you could probably save one set by restoring Howth/Malahide to Bray journey time to 70 minutes, although turnaround times would be reduced to 5 minutes in some instances.

It is clear that this timetable has disrupted and inconvenienced many more people than it has benefited. The urgent priority should now be the restoration of capacity on key peak period DART trains even if this means abandoning the NTA's vanity fixed ten minute interval off-peak DART schedule.

Given what happened on the Maynooth line this morning I would expect to see similar changes to services on that line.

Not sure that a timetable change would resolve ďan operational issueĒ that caused some trains not to operate - that suggests either no driver or a mechanical issue with the train that was to operate them.

To be fair as I see it there were clearly some timetable issues (primarily around Portmarnock), but IE were very unlucky this week with at least one DART failure and several other mechanical issues causing knock on problems for other services around them.

To blame the new timetable for everything is a tad simplistic and OTT.

There may well be further timetable changes needed but I donít think they would solve all of the issues the railway had this week.

Not sure that a timetable change would resolve ďan operational issueĒ that caused some trains not to operate - that suggests either no driver or a mechanical issue with the train that was to operate them.

To be fair as I see it there were clearly some timetable issues (primarily around Portmarnock), but IE were very unlucky this week with at least one DART failure and several other mechanical issues causing knock on problems for other services around them.

To blame the new timetable for everything is a tad simplistic and OTT.

There may well be further timetable changes needed but I donít think they would solve all of the issues the railway had this week.

While there were indeed a number of train failures, as well as cancellations due to driver issues, most of the problems this week were self inflicted and arose from the obsession with increasing off-peak DART frequency at the expense of peak-time DART users, longer distance commuters as well as Enterprise, Sligo and Rosslare passengers.

Without investment in additional track, loops, crossovers, platforms and trains, the current operational mess will just get worse and hugely diminish the value of the railway to all but short distance users who might well be better served by an on-street LUAS rather than an expanded DART operation.

The weather this week (apart from today) was very benign - but it takes very little to unbalance the current house of cards and it was noticeable that the weather was adding to today's extensive delays.

Given what happened on the Maynooth line this morning I would expect to see similar changes to services on that line.

I think pigs will fly first. Maynooth line users are conditioned to being treated as second class citizens, and looking at twitter the complaints about services on that line are a magnitude less than those from Portmarnock users.

It's very frustrating that rail services to the city centre (Tara, and to a lesser extent Pearse) on the Maynooth line, which were already comparatively poor to the DART, can be cut back to give DART users an even better service. At weekends there isn't even an operational explanation for it. But Irish Rail will tell us were getting an upgraded service in December and these cuts are to make way for it. Sorry Irish Rail, but the bus beats the train to the city centre by a good 20 minutes for me under the new timetable. AND I can still interconnect with the LUAS at Trinity, something I can't really do with the new train timetable.

I do think this is worse than some of the DART pictures from the last week but it won't get publicised.

That was from Friday and the reason was that a number of services operated by one train were cancelled due to either no driver being available or a mechanical fault with the train itself. Other trains would have been jammed as a result.

That has nothing to do with the new timetable and could have happened a week ago.